Similar to AT&T in the US, O2 has now put a data limit on pay monthly users. O2 had already put a 750MB limit of Pay As You Go users but have now changed there unlimited plans to have limited data caps. The cost for additional data isn’t that steap and for those who need it shouldn’t be that much of an issue but it opens up a competitive advantage to any of the multiple UK carriers who offer true unlimited data.

Orange & Tesco Mobile are soon to be joined by Vodafone as one the iPhone carriers in the UK. They have announced that the iPhone will be on their networking starting January 14th.

The plans start at £30 a month for 24 months, with additional handset charges ranging from £59 (iPhone 3G 8GB) to £239 (3GS 32GB). However, if you sign onto a £35 a month contract for 24 months the 8GB iPhone 3G is free.

Unlike Orange, O2 and Tesco Mobile; Vodafone don’t appear to be offering a Pay As You Go option for its customers.

There has been some concerns whether or not the network would be able to handle the major increase in traffic, but Guy Laurence, chief executive of Vodafone UK, says the company has been preparing for the launch for over a year, strengthening their infrastructure for the release.

As I spoke about before, Tesco said how they were hoping to release the iPhone 3GS before Christmas. Now the date has been set for December 14th, just in time for Christmas. Tesco gave some further details on their offerings of the iPhone. It has free unlimited 3G (fair use policy applies) and BT Openzone WiFi access, which is free for a year to Pay As You Go customers and for the life of your contract if your on Pay Monthly, the same as O2 offers.

The cheapest contract is £20 per month for their one-year contract, but that gets you only £60 calls and texts allowance and you have to pay £320 for the 16GB device itself. They also offer an unlimited calls and texts plan for £60 per month, cheaper than what Orange offer. Last of all they offer half-price calling to your favourite five numbers. The Pay As You Go costs will be the same as what O2 and Orange offer.

UK supermarket giant, Tesco, has unveiled that they will start to sell iPhone’s this year. Offering ‘competivie contract prices’. A spokesman for the firm said that it hoped to offer the phone “in time for Christmas”. They have not yet revealed tariffs but are offering “competitive prices”.

Tesco has now joined the iPhone party: O2, Orange, Vodafone and now Tesco will sell both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. Orange said that they had sold more than 30,000 handsets on its first day of release.

The phone will still be running on O2 as Tesco Mobile and O2 are in a joint venture. You will be able to get the phones both on contract and pay as you go.

After today’s announcement from Telefonica Europe that O2 will unlock their iPhones to every network once the iPhone is released on other networks means that perhaps other countries will have to follow suit and therefore perhaps the end of hacking to unlock the iPhone. Blacksn0w is the latest unlocking tool from GeoHot which unlocks the latest baseband, however I’m wondering as if to how they will roll out the unlock, either by a carrier update or software update I assume. But if so it won’t take a hacker too long to work out how it’s being unlocked and simply apply it to other phones making it harder for Apple to play the cat and mouse game.

The CEO stated that iPhones will be unlocked once the contract is up, but on Pay As You Go there is no contract so surly they should be sold unlocked, however the way it was started it seems that you have to go to get it unlocked and it won’t just be rolled out. And although I’m going to keep using O2 if they roll this out I’m going to unlock my 8GB iPhone 3G before I sell it to upgrade to a 3GS. Hopefully the rest of the world follows suit and the iPhone becomes a network free device.

With the release of the iPhone on UK network Orange about a week away, Orange have released the pricing details for the Pay Monthly and Pay As You Go plans. One thing to remember that Orange wasn’t planning on challenging O2 on prices but this gives people who don’t like O2 or who are already on Orange a chance to get an iPhone.

The only big difference between what O2 offers and what Orange offers is that for £122.34 per month you can get unlimited minutes and texts. For Pay As You Go, an 8GB iPhone 3G will cost £343, the 16GB iPhone 3GS is £440 and the 32GB iPhone 3GS is £539. The prices are slightly cheaper than O2 but what I still wonder about is does that now mean iPhone’s sold in the UK should work on both O2 and Orange?
If so, in the first quarter of next year UK iPhone’s will work on O2, Orange (Soon to be merged with T-Mobile) and Vodafone.

Update: So it’s been pointed out that now Orange’s ‘unlimited’ plan there is only 750MB.